Yes. Before, it was a voluntary agreement between the manufacturers and the EU. But now the EU wants to make it a directive because one major player isn't playing nice.

I feel that's a very important point to note.

I think in the future wireless data transfer will become more common. If not through NFC, through WLAN. I already do all data transfer between my computer and my phone through WLAN, because it's easy for me to set up an FTP server on my phone or to scan the barcode of a URL of something hosted on my desktop's HTTPD. Easier than finding a cable.

They aren't really cursing the EU here, in my opinion. This is a private conversation between two people who seem to have a lot of other private conversations with each other. I think that it was a summary implying "we should get the UN to 'glue the whole thing together' instead of keeping trying to go through the EU because that hasn't been productive so far".

edit: The American colloquialism "fuck that" (alone) means "I'm not doing that" or "I don't like that", not "damn that to hell".

edit2 (after /u/opium_of_the_people's replies): To clarify, in context I don't think the phrase alone would (nor was meant to) offend the EU if it was somehow overhearing the conversation and the point of that comment was to disagree with what the title says.

I was a teenager between 2004 and 2012, and I never did anything like this, and declined whenever someone else was wanting to. The risks are too great (blackmail, permanent storage, etc), and I could never fathom how people would think of doing this.

edit: Still, now, I make sure that my phone's camera is turned to the table's side when I'm about to get naked. :V

I am not based in the US, and believe that man-made climate change is occuring, but one educated US conservative that I talk to is still 'sceptical' about it because of how research for dissenting research, and even research in concurrant causes, was cut in the US under previous administrations.

I don't have access to enough knowlege to counter that argument properly, I can only reasonably assume the funding was cut after the dissenting opinions were disproven. I think many other people believe the same thing.

I'd like it if cryptocurrencies adopted their own abbreviation standard which does not fit, and cannot possibly be construed as needing to fit, into the ISO 4217 standard.

An example of a cryptocurrency currently doing this is Dogecoin, using the abbreviation DOGE instead of DGE or DOG. I think a four letter abbreviation (which is nothing like ISO 4217) would be better for Bitcoin as well, avoiding awkward X's and such.